NEW DELHI: Google will comply with Indian laws on data localisation, a top company executive has said, even as the California-headquartered Internet giant works with the local government and the industry to advocate a policy best suited for consumers.

“We follow local laws and local legislation, so whatever India decides we will comply with,” Rajan Anandan, vicepresident for Google India and South East Asia, told ET in an interview.

The company is giving consumers the choice to see how much personal data it stores along with the option of “taking it down”, Anandan said, adding that the company is working with industry associations and the government to come up with the “right answer” which is good for the country and its consumers.

Google dominates the Indian Internet ecosystem through search, its video platform You-Tube, and ‘Android’ operating system (OS), which supports nine out of 10 smartphones sold in the country. It also owns ‘Tez’, the second-most-used payment application that works on the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) platform.

“Today, it is a global Internet economy. Obviously, when you change any aspect of that you have to be very thoughtful of what you want to change, because it has implications on many things,” said Anandan.

Last month, the RBI asked all payment companies operating in India to set up data storage facilities within the country in the next six months.

In its notification, the central bank said while the payments ecosystem has grown in India, it needs “unfettered supervisory access” to the transaction data to ensure better monitoring of the network.

The deadline has evoked mixed reactions,with some sections of the industry saying it is too short a period to comply. Some also fear that the order will disrupt well-established global networks besides dampening new innovation in the sector.

Anandan said the company launched its local data centre in Mumbai in September 2017.

“But our architectures are global, so data will flow around the world. That’s why I said today it’s a global Internet.”

Storing data locally will require changes to architectures for very large infrastructures, and Anandan said that it will “not be easy”.

“You are changing complete architectures, very large infrastructures and networks, but our view is very simple. We should come up with right answer collectively. But it should all focus on what is the right answer for the Indian consumer,” he said.

The RBI notification has split the payments industry. While players such as Paytm have welcomed the move, US business advocacy groups have raised concerns with authorities, arguing that restricting data flowing across borders would risk a country’s global competitiveness, would not necessarily ensure data protection and could also hurt India’s software export market.

ET had reported last week that both US-India Business Council (USIBC) and the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (USISPF) have argued for free flow of data and said such a move could have a backlash.

Besides the RBI move, the government, following the illegal access of Facebook user data by analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, is looking to mandate all Internet firms to host data of local users within India to protect user privacy.

Anandan said one of the reasons for the government to insist on data localisation may be privacy, but the company is already taking it seriously.

“What we try to do is create transparency, choice and control for the consumer.”